Category Archives: waterboard

Rand Paul’s filibuster over all the president’s drones was a huge hash tag hit on Twitter. While Senator Paul talked himself blue in the face (with the help of Ted Cruz, MikeLee, Marco Rubio and others), old guard red state Republicans dined with the president. They were not happy with the kids’ behavior while they were out.

According to the NYT, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy for the president. On Tuesdays President Obama personally selects, from a stack of cards, a terrorist to be killed. The way the news has been this week, I guess we should be thankful he doesn’t eat the condemned. Some are fine with the killing part, not so much the hypocrisy. Others, however, don’t believe the Commander in Chief job description includes judge, jury, and executioner.

Five 9/11 bad guys, including Sheik Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were arraigned in a military court at Gitmo over the weekend. One of the defense attorneys wore an abaya and requested that women on the prosecution side do likewise to help her clients might avoid the occasion of sin. Another defense lawyer asked that his clients not be subject to strip search before entering the courtroom. The judge is thinking it over. As for the clients themselves? They prayed, refused to speak, and passed around a copy of The Economist magazine.

AG Eric Holder announced, that under certain conditions, it would be quite all right to kill American citizens overseas.

Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic picked up on this, but why do I think if Bush had said it the legacy media would have given it considerably more attention? True, the WSJ likes the policy. But where’s the outrage we heard concerning mere electronic spying on mere non-American citizens who happened to call or email Americans?

Under President Obama’s orders to go mano a mano, Navy Seals shot and killed the Evil One in cold blood. His Miranda rights were not read and he won’t be tried in a civilian court. His corpse was thrown on a helicopter and flown to a ship in the Arabian Sea where it was dumped overboard. All well and good.

But hard to square with a president who wanted Gitmo closed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tried in Manhattan, and considered prosecuting CIA interrogators to show the superiority of American justice. On the other hand, Obama has blown over 1500 terror suspects to smithereens.